Anthroposophical Life Gifts

Schmidt Number: S-3523

On-line since: 30th November, 2010

Lecture VI

Spiritual Science, the Practice of Life
and the Destinies of Souls

Berlin, 14th May, 1918

Spiritual
Science should above all things be conceived of, by those who
have already noted for a long time, in the sense that the
question should come before the soul as to how Spiritual
Science can be most intensely effective for human life. This
has certainly often been emphasized, but we cannot often
enough to bring forward the side of the reality of Spiritual
Science and its significance for our age. Spiritual Science
is certainly in a sense a Science, and as such it is, we may
say, still in a “fragmentary” stage at the
present day, only partly established; what it may eventually
become can really only be present in the first beginnings at
the present time.

What I mean by
this is the content of Spiritual Science, through which we
can learn something of man in so far as this has its life on
the other side of the gates of physical life: which are
birth, or conception, and death. Through spiritual
Science we can also learn something about the evolution of
the Earth and the Cosmos, and as to how this evolution of
Earth and the Cosmos is connected with man, and so on. Thus,
through Spiritual Science the human desire for knowledge can
be satisfied in a more comprehensive and complete manner than
is possible through external sensible science. We can answer
the questions which weigh on man's soul and so on.

Besides this
significance of Spiritual Science from the view of
‘content’ there is another very essential one.
This can be observed if we keep in view what we can become, what
can be made of our soul-life, our soul-disposition, our
soul-constitution, when we busy ourselves with the thoughts
and ideas which come to us from Spiritual Science. It might
even be — in what science has this not been the case in
the course of the development of mankind! — that much
of what can and must be proclaimed today quite
conscientiously from the sources of Spiritual Science might
have to be corrected; that much may appear in another form in
the future through the further progress of Spiritual Science.
Then perhaps there may be a different content in one or
another department of this Spiritual Science. But what it may
become for the disposition and constitution of our soul
through its ideas and its thoughts, would not be affected
thereby, and this is fundamentally connected with certain
basic qualities of our present day. We will today review
certain basic characteristics of our time, particularly as
regards the constitution of the soul of man. We will dwell on
the four most important soul-activities which we know well
from our observation: the perception of man with
respects to outer sense-processes; imagination (the
forming of ideas) through which we then work upon these outer
sense-impressions; our feeling; and our
willing. Our soul-life runs its course from waking
till going to sleep in perception, imagination, feeling and
willing.

First we will
consider perception. When the soul's eye is
sharpened by Spiritual Science we can observe what has of
necessity developed as the basic cultural characteristic of
the human soul in the course of the last three or four
centuries, in those countries which come into our
consideration. (What I say is not setting criticism: it is
only a characterization.) It may be asked what this is. It
only needs a superficial observer of life to discover that
men, in regard to their faculty of perception (in respects
to the immediate relation of the soul to the outer world
through the senses), have come to a point when they
constantly need livelier, more violent, more fascinating
impressions, to satisfy the faculty of perception of their
senses. Those of you who are somewhat older may think back to
your youth; just compare many of the phenomena of life in
your youth, which you could perceive around you, with similar
phenomena of life now — the further you go back the more
striking this is — and ask yourselves to what a high
degree that which is known as the impulse, the tendency to
the ‘sensational,’ has not gained the upper hand!
What is really this sensational element? It rests on the fact
that man needs today forceful, exaggeratedly quick-changing
and purely sensuous impressions, so that he may be thrilled
and carried away from the outer world; he wants to be taken
hold of and fascinated. The sensational has gained the upper
hand to an uncommon extent. But something significant is
connected with this. Through the domination of the
sensational, the strength and energy of the human Ego is
modified. Spiritual Science alone can lead to an
understanding of what comes under consideration here; for he
shows what perception of the outer world really is.

If we search
through philosophical literature we find nothing more spoken
of in the nature of external perception, or
‘sensing’ as it is called. All sorts of theories
have been set up as to what sensing, perceiving really is,
within the human physical soul life. I need not enlighten you
as to that. But the point of view of Spiritual Science in
this respect shall be indicated.

I have already
mentioned here in Berlin, in a public lecture, that the
development of natural science in the 19th century and into
our own times has accomplished great things, great things in
regard to the understanding of certain sensible connections
of the external world of realities. But it sees the evolution
of man in particular as far too direct and simple. It simply
imagines that at one time there were only the lower animals,
then higher animals, then still higher ones, and out of these
men finally developed as, in a sense, the highest animal all.
The evolution of man, however, is not so simple as this. We
have often pointed out that man, who must appear to us in his
external bodily form has an image of the divine reality of
the Cosmos, can be thought of as represented in the most
varied manner. He can even be thought of, in regard to
certain natural-scientific points of view, as being divided
into three parts: first the head- or senses-man (this is not
exact but as the most important senses lie in the head, we
may say ‘head-man’). Secondly, the trunk-man; and
thirdly, the extremities-man. Of these three members of the
human organization, the trunk-man, the heart- and lung-man,
alone is really formed as natural science imagines him today.
The head-man is really not in the process of progressive
development but of a retrogressive one. The head of man arrests
the progressive development at a certain stage and turns it
back again. It has been repeatedly said that such an idea is
difficult, and it has been asked how one can simplify it for
oneself. I have pointed out in several places even the
external rightly understood facts of natural science confirms
my statements — only one must be a real natural
scientist and not merely follow the pattern of certain
scholars of the present day. Observe the human eye, and
compare it with the eye of animals which have reached a
certain stage of evolution. We cannot say that the human eye
is more complicated in its outer form than the eyes of these
animals, for that would not be true. There are animals which
have, for example, in the inside of their eye — where
we, from an outer physical point of view, have nothing at all
— the ‘cell-apophysis’ and the
‘sword-apophysis.’ These are certain organs in
the inside of the eye which are continuations of the blood
vessels into the inside of the eye. Through these an intimate
connection between the whole life of feeling of the animal
and his perceptive life is established in the eye. The animal
feels much more intensely in the eye than man does. In man
there is no ‘cell-apophysis’ or
‘sword-apophysis.’ The human eye is simplified.
In its form is not merely progressive, it is retrogressive.
One could prove in the smallest details of the human
head-organism that man is really retrograding in respect to
his head, especially compared with the rest of the human
make-up, which is progressive.

Someone who
thought that this backward development of the head was
difficult to imagine asked me whether I could point to a
significant fact or clue by which one could understand this
better. I told him to think of the following: In the process
of development of the different animals ending with man, it
comes about a certain period of the embryonic stage that the
human being turns back to the hairy state. Man himself is not
hairy, but the head belongs to the hairy portions, in
general; the fact that man, as regards the formation of his
head, reverts to the rank of the animal, likewise shows the
retrograde development of the head. This is a superficial,
external indication. The inner signs speak much more
distinctly. I beg you to keep in mind the vast importance of
these facts.

For the very
reason that the head is retrogressive, that evolution does
not progress in a straight line but is retrogressive in the
head, is dammed up and turned back, room is thereby created
for the psycho-spiritual development of man. Those natural
scientists who are of the opinion that the psycho-spiritual
life of man is only a result of his physical organism, do not
understand their own natural science aright. They do not
understand that in order to bring his soul and spirit nature
into being it is necessary that the physical organization of
man should not shoot and sprout, but that it should withdraw.
It flags and is turned back and makes room for the
psycho-spiritual development. Where man most develops his
soul and spirit nature, there the physical development
draws back.

One becomes
inwardly aware, when one has gone through a psycho-spiritual
development, that, simply through inner observation, one can
get an answer to the question: What really is ordinary
imagination and perception? What is the ordinary waking life,
in which imagination and perception are mingled?

As regards the
head of man, perception and imagination and the waking life
in general is a state of ‘hungering.’ Man is so
peculiarly organized that, in his inner equipoise, from
waking till sleeping, the head, that is his inner
organization, is continually ‘hungry’ as compared
with the rest of the body. Certain ascetics who seek an
increase of psycho-spiritual life have made use of this; they
allow the whole body to be hungry, because the
hunger-process, extended to the whole body, is said to bring
about certain inner illumination. This is false. The normal
state is that our head in the waking state is nourished less
through the inner processes than the rest of the organism,
and we can only be awake and perceive because the head is
less nourished than the rest of the body.

Now the
question arises: if our head hungers whilst we are undergoing
this backward development of the head — in sleep there
is an attempt to arrest this process — what then do we
perceive? Through Spiritual Science we learn to distinguish
between two things which in practice are always linked
together, but which are two quite different things. There is
first the mere waking life, and then the outer perceptions
and the ordinary concept of memory. What then goes on when in
waking consciousness we are hungering in our head?

First of all we
are aware on the one hand of our Ego from the last
incarnation. When we are merely awake we are aware of
what we brought with us from the spiritual world, and with
which we entered into existence through birth or conception.
That enters and fills the space made for it in our organism;
but when we perceive outer sensible objects, these external
objects step into the space of the Ego, which otherwise we
perceive when we have no external impression but are merely
awake. In ordinary life these two things are intermingled:
we are continually perceiving external objects, and are very
seldom in such a state of soul that we are merely awake. The
state of soul directed to external things is however always
interwoven with an inclination to perceive our former Ego and
to replace it by something, by external colors and sounds;
then again, to perceive the former Ego and then again the
external things. As soon as we perceive externally, as soon
as an outer object works upon us, it suppresses our tendency,
our power, to perceive the Ego of our last incarnation. It
remains unconscious, we know nothing of it; but in this
sense-perceiving there is really a conflict between the
object which now stands before us and the Ego from our last
incarnation.

Now you can
imagine what it means when we are developing a striving after
the sensational, when we wish to give ourselves up to the
outer world. That never makes us stronger in life, but always
weaker; for in so doing we weaken our Ego from the past
incarnation, which in a certain sense constitutes our
strength. Thus you can clearly see that with the inclination
of man towards the sensational, a certain weakening of
the human nature appears, and the Ego becomes weaker.

Now when we do
not perceive, but think, imagine, what process takes place?
Either our thoughts are silent or — which is not so
frequent in present-day man — they link onto some
external perception. When they are silent in waking-life, all
we have gone through between the last incarnation and the
present one works in us, in that which is able to work where
room has been made for it by the body. Thus the last
incarnation works in the place where perception arises; and
in the place where conceptions arises, works the
life which we have spent between death and the present birth.
If we develop powerful thoughts within ourselves, it means
that we are trying to develop these out of what we brought
with us from the last birth, upon which we must take our
stand. If only we have all thoughts which are called up
within us from an external stimulus, which only revolve in
our soul because we receive them from outside, we continually
weaken what we have brought over from the time he dreamed
death and birth, that is to say, our Ego. The search for
sensation weakens our present life. The desire to animate our
Club evenings with the dusky pints of beer so that we need to
make as little demand as possible on ourselves, or the
excitement of playing games, in short all this seeking for
excitement from without, is not a strengthening but a weakening of
the Ego, and it rests fundamentally on the fact that we do
not feel strong enough to occupy ourselves with something
pertaining to our soul-life. Through Spiritual Science we can
clearly see the underlying reason why people are so desirous
of sensation and in need of stimulus at the present time.
What enters from this side into our present-day culture can
be designated by a common name. Do not be offended by this
name; it betokens a fundamental feature of many of the
currents in the life of the present day: a limitation and
narrowness of outlook. No one can deny, even taking
present-day science and other activities into consideration,
that one of the chief characteristics of the present-day man
is his limited outlook, that limitation which prevents him
from seeking the rich material in his own soul which comes
from his past life and from his prenatal life. He does not
believe, and he would have first to believe it, that
one could be incited to do this through Spiritual
Science.

Let us observe
from this point of view what thoughts and ideas of Spiritual
Science can be for the mood and disposition of the soul. They
are certainly not external stimuli, nor anything sensational,
and they decidedly did not aim at this. They do not take
possession of the senses through external sensations. Many
people miss this. In matters of Spiritual Science people must
themselves reflect, and if they do not bring forth anything
from the fund of their own soul, they are likely to fall
asleep over Spiritual Science.

Spiritual
Science gives us just this animation and shaking up of the
soul-life, so that we gain the possibility of developing
thoughts from our own inner self. It works against the
sensational. It does this specially by giving us the
possibility of thinking much about a few impressions of the
senses. We need not hasten from sensation to sensation. We
can give much thought to all possible sorts of
sense-impressions. All the simple things which approach us
personally become a riddle. Every detail makes us think a
great deal; and thoughts about Saturn, Sun, Moon, the
different Earth and so on, which many find so complicated,
make the mind active and mobile and do not allow
narrow-mindedness to any extent. Thus does our Spiritual
Science work against a certain attribute of culture; it
fights against a narrow outlook in the realm of perception
and imagination. That is different again from the content
which one can get from Spiritual Science; it is something
that it can make up our soul, and we should take note of
that.

Now in regard
to the life of feeling. What is the most noticeable
thing about a person who approaches Spiritual Science in any
way? And what is the most noticeable thing about most people
who do not wish to know anything about it, and who turn aside
from it altogether? In the latter it is lack of interest in
the great circumstances of the world. We must first of all
enlarge our interests beyond what lies nearest, if we are to
become interested in Spiritual Science. For what do most
people in our time care about what the Earth was before it
became “Earth”? What do most people of the
present day care what civilization was before our own time?
To do so one must develop more comprehensive interests. It is
a question of extending one's interests beyond the thing
lying nearest. Our age has the tendency to narrow the sphere
of our interests as much as possible. What is really the
tendency of our age? Allow me to use the following
expression: it is not at all flattering, but I do not wish to
criticize, only to characterize. Our time is striving in all
ways towards narrow-mindedness, towards Philistinism, and if
this takes hold of the majority of people, the consequence
will be that the Philistinism will gradually be introduced
into the most public departments. In this respect we have a
remarkable example, which in respect to the things of the
present day, must have a most depressing effect on those who
can see through things.

In the East we
have a nation which today is certainly in its infancy as
regards the basic forces of its soul, but which possesses
basic forces which in the future — in the sixth
Post-Atlantean epoch of culture — are to develop to a
remarkable height; basic soul forces which will work
spiritually and have a spiritual character, and which we
ought to recognize and cultivate as such. But what has
established itself as public life in a remarkable manner
today over a great part of this national force? Leninism! One
cannot imagine anything more grotesque than the coupling
together — I do not now refer to the man but to the
thing — of this “aping of the civilization of the
West” with the prophetic civilization of the East. There
are no two things more opposite, and yet they are coupled
together here. It is the most grotesque expression of
materialistic striving; for out of the Folk-Spirit of the
East something absolutely anti-philistine will be formed; but
Leninism is the most absolute basic force of philistinism,
the negation of all cultural interests of a far-reaching
nature and the limitation of the interests of civilization to
the narrowest realm of philistinism. We must clearly
understand that. Nothing can better help us to penetrate
these things, then the knowledge of Spiritual Science.
Spiritual Science also works against philistinism, by
appealing to the wide comprehensive interests of man. For one
cannot possibly become a Spiritual Scientist without taking
an interest in what binds man to the Cosmos, in what passes
beyond all that is narrow and pulses into all that is great.
So, in the realm of the life of feeling, spiritual knowledge
is also the opponent of philistinism and of
narrow-mindedness, which must inevitably result from
materialism; as in the realm of the perceptive and conceptual
life is also the opponent of narrow-mindedness and
limitation.

In the domain
of the will-life also, he who observes life even but
to a small extent, can make a noteworthy observations. In
respect to the expressions of the will, not materialism
itself but what it brings in its train leads to the
development of something remarkable in collective human life.
The will must indeed always express itself with the help of
the bodily nature, if it is to have an effect on the outer
world. In regard to the will, present-day materialism makes
man awkward. By reason of man's directing his bodily forces
only in to quite distinct channels in his earliest youth and
wielding them only in some particular directions, he becomes
awkward in wider spheres. There are men today who, when they
first find themselves in need of it, cannot even sew on a
trouser-button for themselves, let alone anything else,
strange as this may sound. If a man does not regard Spiritual
Science as theory or doctrine but as something that works
warmly within him and is taken into his whole personality, he
will find that this passes over into the muscles and the
pulsation of the blood and makes him dexterous. If we
imparted a spiritually-scientific way of picturing things to
our children, we should see the result; we should see that
they would become adroit, that they would be able to do things
more easily, their fingers would become more flexible. The
possibility of making the ideas more mobile, occasions the
will also do become more active in its methods of expression.
Thus in the sphere of the will-life, Spiritual Science fights
against that which threatens mankind: awkwardness. This is a
characteristic of our time to a far greater extent than we
realize. Just observe how little fitted men are today to do
anything at all outside the narrow concerns of their
professions; they are no longer able to do anything else
besides; and they only do more or less work in their
professions for the reason that their soul's course has been
laid out for them. Confront a man who is thoroughly routine
in his profession with something different, and you will see
how very one-sided our present-day culture is. That cannot be
obviated by external means; for the whole political economy
tends towards specializing everything. To try to fight
against this would be absurd. It is possible, however, so to
fortify men's inner nature that they would receive the
impulse of dexterity from the center of there being. For that
it is necessary however to be quite permeated, thoroughly
permeated, with the knowledge of the super-sensible world, and
chiefly of the super-sensible nature of man. We cannot
understand perception and conception, even from a
spiritually-scientific point of view, if we do not know what
I have said before, that the human organism makes room,
through the backward activity of the head-organism, for the
past life and also the life between death and rebirth to flow
in. The life after death also close into our organism.

The opinions of
natural science about the human organization are, as I have
already said, far too one-sided. The trunk-man alone might be
thus one-sidedly observed, but not so the extremities-man. If
we observe the extremities: arms, hands, feet, legs (which
organism is continued inwardly), this extremity-organism is
seen to be the reverse of the head-organism: and
over-development exists there which forces the development
beyond the normal. If we accurately study man's development
in regard to these relations we shall see that it shoots
beyond the needs between birth and death. Let us consider
only what is external: the armed organism in connection with
the breasts; the secondary organs which serve propagation;
the legs in connection with the primary sexual organs —
the extremities in connection physically with that whereby
man even physically looks out beyond himself. The extremities
organism at its center serves not nearly what is poured out
over the individual human life, but that by means of which
his vision extends beyond himself: the psycho-spiritual. What
lies — as soul and spirit — beyond the
extremities extends beyond what serves human life between
birth and death. Thus, just as man physically out of his own
organism functions into that of the child through the center
of his extremities, so that is present in him spiritually as
imagination which he carries through the portal of death by
virtue of his being an arm- and leg-man. Through imaginative
cognition it can be very clearly seen that man bears quite
distinctly — and even anatomically — his future
state after death, spiritually in his extremities-organism.
If we study natural science properly, we shall gradually
cease to say that Spiritual Science is something that we
cannot understand. If we really observe the human organism
not as rectilinear, for that it is not, but as it really is,
then natural science itself will make it necessary to turn to
Spiritual Science. Mankind will of course have to overcome
something — the belief in the similarity of all other
sense-impressions. The similarity of all external
sense-impressions is believed today, not only by the
unlearned, but also by the scientific investigator who has a
man before him in the clinic and examines him anatomically.
To him the heart is a similar organism to the head, but this
is not correct; the head as compared with the heart stands at
the retrogressive stage in its whole organization. Only we do
not know how to observe; that is the trouble. If we want to
learn to observe correctly, we can gain from natural science
itself fundamental conviction of the spiritual in man, which
passes through births and deaths. When however we arrive at
this, we shall also take into account this soul and spirit
nature in the whole movement and growth of culture and we
shall then understand the importance of the struggle against
having a narrow outlook, against philistinism, and gaucherie,
and we shall copperhead much else as well. Above all we shall
learn to reckon with the spirit in practical life.
The physicist is allowed to speak freely today of positive
and negative electricity, of positive and negative magnetism;
and yet it is taken amiss when the spiritual scientist in his
domain speaks of two currents of force in the human soul, the
Luciferic and Ahrimanic. But these two currents of force are
just as much a polarity for the human soul as positive and
negative magnetism or electricity in the physical. If we wish
to understand humanity in its development we must take the
trouble to observe what is at work in regard to the Luciferic
and Ahrimanic element in life. An example:

Our social
structure was for a long period of time influenced in a
one-sided manner by Luciferic beings. Yet we could not simply
eradicate the Luciferic element from life! A person who is
always saying, “I will protect myself from the
Luciferic element” is the very one to fall into it.
There can only be a question of conceding it the right place
in life and of knowing what is Luciferic and what is
Ahrimanic: then we shall not exaggerate their effects and not
put them in a false light. For centuries our social structure
in Europe and also in other parts of the world has been ruled
by strong one-sided Luciferic impulses. These strong
Luciferic impulses lay hold of the instincts and habits of
man, of that which works from within. All this is not
criticism, only a characterization of these times. How did
the Luciferic element work? Now great consideration has been
given to determining social culture, the position of a man in
life by laying great value on his vanity, on his ambition.
These are Luciferic impulses. The vanity and ambition of a
man had been stimulated. I would remind you how much weight
is attached to pride and ambition in schools, even up to our
times; and pride and ambition has led a man in many respects
to acquire this or that, in order to gain an important place
in life.

We have now
reached an important point in life. It can scarcely escape
the notice of a close observer that these Luciferic impulses
are on the decline. To use a superficial expression, they no
longer draw. But now something else is to be brought in,
something essentially Ahrimanic; and one Ahrimanic feature is
creeping into the customs of our present day. Our beloved
populist so free from authority, which never wants to believe
in authority, and which therefore, as a matter of course,
falls a victim to all authorities, will again unsuspectingly
allow to pass unobserved what is now about to take root as a
one-sided Ahrimanic power in regard to the form the social
structure. Something quite remarkable is now making itself
felt, so-called “Intelligence tests.”
Experimental psychology, which at the universities is
doubtless to a certain extent justifiable, can discover many
things as regards the working of the human body and as to how
it expresses various things. But this psychology desires to
have a certain occupation, and testing is easier than any
other examination of the soul. The experimenter has a certain
instrument which makes records on an electrical course; it
places students at certain points and notes how long it takes
for an impression to be received and to be brought to their
consciousness. He thus works, from he an external clinical
point of view, in a business-like way. That is easier than to
investigate inwardly. For certain things the value of this
experimental psychology is undeniable, but it wants to have a
wider field. It now wants to take in hand “Intelligence
tests.” For that, a number of children are taken from
various grades of school classes and are tested as regards
their “talents,” their memory, their power of
observation, and so on; but the way in which the test is
carried out by the methods of experimental psychology is very
remarkable. Memory, for instance, is tested in the following
way: On the blackboard two rows of words are written which
have no connection with one another; for example,
“head” and “crystal,” then two other
disconnected words, and so on. After they have all been
rubbed out again, the first word only is written down and the
child has quickly to add the second one from memory. Those
children who have best observed which word came next are
considered to have the best memories, and the others who
can recollect nothing at all or need a longer time are
supposed to have a worse one. That is how the memory or the
intelligence is tested. I will read a prize example of this
(from the newspaper “German Politics,” 1918:
“The discovery of the psycho-technique in Germany
during the War” by Dr. Curt Piorkowski):

“For
instance, in getting the concepts of ‘mirror,’
‘murderer,’ ‘escape,’ a whole row
of different connections between the mirror and the escape
assert themselves, for the discovery of which no sort of
special knowledge is necessary, only a distinct
combination. The obvious connection (which will be made by
the less intelligent persons) is of course that the person
threatened sees in the mirror the murderer creeping along.
Yet quite other suggestions are also possible!
A stealthy murderer can for instance knock up against
a mirror and waken the threatened sleeper by the clatter,
so that he can escape; or the designing murderer may be
blinded by a reflecting mirror.”

Imagine how
intelligent a boy or girl must be if they are to hit upon
such an idea!

“But
motives of feeling may also be related. So for instance the
murderer may be so terrified at his own image, indistinctly
seen in the mirror in the semi-darkness, that he desists
from the carrying-out of the deed, be it that horror or
prickings of conscious seize him at the sight of himself in
the mirror, or that in the dim light he takes his own
reflected image for that of another.”

It is
considered quite especially intelligent if the person under
examination thinks that the murderer might see himself in the
mirror, and take his own face for that of another.

“Another idea is the discovery of the stealthy
murderer reflected in the water of the calm peaceful forest
lake near threatened man, and so on.”

Just according
to whether the examinee interpolates the obvious thing or not
is he considered more or less intelligent, and as a child who
is shown to be the more intelligent in this respect will be
supported by scholarships or in some other way; while the one
who could think of nothing further then that one might see a
murderer in the mirror receives no scholarships. In such a
way is the intelligence to be tested today and with regard to
these tests there is enthusiasm. By this means social order is
to be influenced even if not arranged. The dear public
however will welcome such things with all their hearts as the
issue of the true and sincere science of the present day, for
these things create a great stir today. In this way sought to
find ways and means of methodically “putting the right
man in the right place,” and essays are written
beginning as follows: “More than almost any other
science has applied psychology blossomed during the war. It
is not a chance appearance, for war with its waste of men and
its various requirements has proved the importance of not
using human forces extravagantly and aimlessly; but using
them to the best advantage. Up till now pedagogy alone dealt
practically with exact psychology; now three new questions
are added: for what vocation as the man best suited? (Problem
of the suitability of a profession) How is a substitute be
found for the many intelligences that have been destroyed?
(Selection of talent); What possibilities of healing are
there for those wounded in the head or those with otherwise
damaged nerves? (Practice of psychical therapy).”
— And so it goes on in the style. An error of the times
is coupled with a significant phrase and the matter will be
less noticed, because there are, of course, vocations which
must be conducted according to this method. It is
quite obvious that airmen for instance have to be examined in
a similar way, with a certain justification. But this should
not be applied to all. For in such a one-sided development
something Ahrimanic will thereby be brought into our social
structure. All that comes from the soul-nature, from the
elemental, impulsive soul-nature, would thus be eliminated
from human aspirations and endeavor. To put the matter
roughly: Do we believe that if such intelligence tests could
really be determinative, a phrase like “Joy and Love
are the wings of great deeds” could still have
significance? If people would only think of their own great
men! We can be quite sure that if such an examiner had to
examine Helmholtz he would have represented him quite
certainly as a fellow without talent. Read the biography of
Helmholtz!

That is an
Ahrimanic feature. Things appear disguised as well. If people
are not able to observe things through Spiritual Science,
they cannot see where the harm is. It does not suffice that
in our time people like to wallow in all kinds of sensual
feelings, it is necessary they should wake up in regard to
their judgment of life. A great deal would be gained in
regard to this nonsense of intelligence tests if there were
at least a few people who formed an objective opinion about
it. For it will blossom and flourish, you may be quite sure
of that! It will become what the “prejudice-free
soul-test” has at last made it, and it will be
glorified as one of the finest outcomes of that philosophical
tendency which has at last stripped off the old idealistic
prejudices and methods and now goes in for “the
real.” Spiritual Science must work practically in this
sense.

Now much is
connected with these things, and above all this, that
breadth of interest and reality must at
last become fundamental attributes of the human soul. I
should like to give you two pretty examples of the way in
which reality works in our day, and how a certain interest is
not present. If I choose personal examples I take it for
granted that you will not take it amiss, for you indeed know
that I do not do so from any personal foolishness. Recently I
held a lecture in Munich on the experiences which the seer
makes in art. I have never supposed that any newspaper
reporter would be able to understand the subject of Spiritual
Science or to write anything in praise of it. If a newspaper
reporter should begin to write about Spiritual Science in a
flattering manner I should think that something was not in
order; but we may study some examples of their work. In the
lecture mentioned I also spoke of the art of music and of how
musical experience affects the whole man in a
remarkable way, that really whenever there is a musical
experience a rhythm is set up in the inner man. I then spoke
on the one hand in reference to the physiological side,
explaining the flowing to and fro of the brain-fluid through
the arachnoidal space and further demonstrated how the
spinal-marrow canal is elastic to a greater or less degree
and how a wonderful inner rhythm is in fact brought about
thereby. Musical experiences create a glorious rhythm in
life; I mentioned these rhythmical movements of the
brain-fluid as being connected with inspiration and
expiration; and as I also spoke in this lecture of symbolic
ideas, a newspaper reporter wrote that I myself used symbolic
ideas which were untenable: the idea of
‘brain-fluid’! We need only recollect that
without the ‘brain-fluid’ the brain, which
according to the principle of Archimedes becomes lighter than
the brain-fluid, would compress and crush to pieces the blood
vessels lying beneath it. Thus the ‘brain-fluid’
is a very real thing. But thus do matters stand with respect
to the interests which men have, and such is the nonsense
written in consequence.

Then an
example, only a small illustration, of truth and untruth. I
have often mentioned that the remarkable scholar Max Dessoir
has also written a chapter about Anthroposophy in his book
“The Other Side of the Soul.” I tried to point
out to him the many different misrepresentations. Even from
an external point of view his method of relating is really
very comical by reason of its absolute superficiality. Thus
for instance he mentioned my “Philosophy of Spiritual
Activity” and said of it that it was my first literary
production. I could not do otherwise than reply, although it
was out of place to do so, that for 10 years before it
appeared I had already written and had my books published.
But “The Other Side of the Soul” by Max Dessoir
aroused attention; it was discussed everywhere by the
journalists (who consider the brain-fluid as a symbolical
idea). It caught on, and now a second edition has appeared.
In the preface to this, Max Dessoir tries to justify himself,
and again in the same fashion. He cannot get out of it and
says the context proved quite clearly that I did not grasp
what he meant; he meant that the “Philosophy of
Spiritual Activity” was my first
“theosophical” book. Thus apart from the fact
that everyone must smile at his statement that he did not
mean my first literary work, everyone must again laugh when
the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” is called
my first “theosophical” book. For a far-reaching
discussion exists as to whether I abandoned philosophical
authorship in my theosophical works. That is how far veracity
is regarded, and it is necessary to attract people's notice
to it. But without veracity we cannot progress, and we dare
not let such things simply pass in this manner. To anyone who
has knowledge of the things concerned, the whole book of Max
Dessoir is compiled like the chapter on Anthroposophy . And
yet, what happened? A newspaper, the “Kant
Studien,” which regards itself as extremely serious (I
mention this because in this paper no attack is made on
Anthroposophy) — the “Kant Studien” —
which prides itself tremendously on its purely scholarly
scientific bent, speaks of this product of Dessoir as a
serious scientific book in many ways. One of the saddest
experiences one can have is to find a book which evinces the
greatest superficiality considered by a philosophical
magazine as a “serious scientific book,” as it is
called there. Now I ask: What then is the public, the public
which has no belief in authority, to do today? It takes such
works as the “Kant Studien” (Studies of Kant) and
so on, as a matter of course out of the libraries. And yet
such things are to be found in it.

We must go back
to what lies at the base of human nature through the spirit
if the will be present. And this foundation is only touched by
the strivings of Spiritual Science today. In this one cannot
do otherwise than work towards reality, breadth of interest,
towards anti-philistinism and activity as regards life. I
wished to speak to you again of these things so that our
consciousness may not grow faint; in Spiritual Science it is
not merely the content that matters, but also the special
nature of the concept, ideas and thought in our soul, so that
it may be raised out of limitations, philistinism and
awkwardness. That is something which the observer of the special
impulses which lie in Spiritual Science must consider more
and more. We must grasp the practical value of Spiritual
Science. In the next lecture we shall speak further of these
things.